Dear Editor:
(In response to ‘Ghosts of Brandon Township Library,? The Citizen, Jan. 17, page 6): I am fortunate enough to belong to a group called the South East Michigan Ghost Hunters Society (SEMGHS), and have great respect for each and every one of my fellow investigators. These are individuals dedicated to the scientific pursuit of paranormal investigation, and collectively we use quite a wide array of instrumentation to take various measurements in locations where ‘activity? has been reported. One important aspect of any investigation is to try and ‘debunk? some of the stories. For instance, areas that have high electromagnetic fields within certain ranges can cause a sense of paranoia or unease, even skin hives and hallucinations, and so it is important to determine if this might be influencing perceptions.
Other instrumentation used are digital picture and movie cameras and voice recorders, thermometers, geiger counters, trifield and motion indicators, sound amplifiers, and new on the scene is a franks box which uses white noise to assist spirit communication from the other side.
My personal favorite is capturing disembodied voices through the use of a digital voice recorder, and what I have heard blows everything I ever previously thought about death and dying out of the water.
None of this has anything to do with religion, let alone spiritualism, and is pure and simply a scientific inquiry. I would like to point out that Thomas Edison was engaged in research investigating spirit communication also, not too shabby of a mind there, and that prior to the discovery of the microscope, those believing in the atom were mocked for heresy.
Where there are certainly some wack jobs out, a telltale sign is the alignment with any religion, as death has nothing to do with any belief system other than that of the person who has crossed over.
Science always has and always will begin with the simple act of observation and collection of data, and that is what paranormal investigation does. Not having the perfect instrumentation to measure something (yet) means only that we have much more to learn.
All throughout history, science has been plagued with naysayers and doubters who eventually look like fools because they had such small minds as to not accommodate curiosity. It doesn’t matter if Mr. Kissel believes in ghosts or not, that will not bother them or impact their existence. And it certainly won’t affect what I have experienced in my pursuit of this field. I am a scientist by education, and I pursue inquiry via the scientific method in all things. I am convinced that the energies of those who have passed move about us every day, everywhere, and it doesn’t bother me one little bit if Mr. Kissel thinks me a fool or points a finger and chuckles at me. I have data to review, firsthand experience to catalog, and much more evidence to collect in the future. His small mind won’t impact any of that at all.
Tammie Heazlit
Clarkston